News

News

January 2, 2014,
Article

Article

Get The Last Bits Of Cash From Holiday Wallets

The results are in and it’s official: People are shopping. A lot. That’s not so different from past Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Cyber Week results – this has been the biggest shopping week of the year since Shop.org introduced Cyber Monday/Week. But, this holiday shopping season may be remembered for a few unique reasons:

Weaker Black Friday:The New York Times reported that Black Friday results were disappointing, but the low numbers may have been due to a “Black November.” Given the shorter shopping period this year, sales for holiday shoppers began as early as November 1. That and Thanksgiving Day sales may have eaten into Friday. All that said, the NRF reports that the number of shoppers was up, but the dollar amount spent ($407 per person) was lower than last year.

Strongest Cyber Monday on Record:Internet Retailer reported that $2.29 billion was spent on Cyber Monday, shattering all historical records. Business Insider estimates that total e-commerce grew 24% over the three key days. ChannelAdvisor attributes part of this growth to shoppers scouring online stores for products that were sold out in-store. Also, where Cyber Monday used to be shop-at-work event, shopping this year extended well into the evening hours.

Strong Online Christmas Day Sales:San Jose Mercury News reported that online sales were up 16.5% over last year. Amazon announced on Thursday, December 26, that 2013 was its best-ever season, and Amazon Prime had a record-breaking number of new customers.

Now what? How can retailers continue to drive sales through the new year and continue the holiday shopping momentum? Regardless of how much has been spent, there are still plenty of shoppers making purchases and taking advantage of the after Christmas sales. What can be done to make sure those shoppers spend with you?

Activate display to compliment your direct mail strategies: By supplementing direct mail (the many catalogs) with carefully targeted display, retailers are sure to drive more shoppers into the store. Email combined with direct mail and targeted, cross-screen display can be an incredibly powerful combination. Test the combination to see how it compares to other tactics.

Better leverage your offline data to influence your online strategies: Beyond activating your CRM data to target high value customers, review store data to see which are most successful and which are struggling. For the stores that are lagging in sales, invest in targeted display to drive in-store sales. Leverage your data to determine which products are most popular in which stores, then geo-target audiences to promote those products locally.

Don’t just remarket – actively prospect! Use your data to create lookalike models that will help identify new audiences, then present them with relevant offers that will drive sales – continue to feed the funnel. Get incremental; get new users. Tailor your daily spend to mirror your anticipated revenues.

No matter what you decide, shoppers are still out there.

Food For Thought: How are you ramping up your spend to amplify shopping results in the new year? Reply in the comments.

An earlier version of this post appeared on MediaMath’s blog on December 18, 2013.